Tag: movies

Revisiting Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror

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In honor of Black History Month, I thought I’d repost this interview that my wife and I did a few years ago with Xavier Burgin, director of the documentary Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror. If you’re a film fan of any kind, I highly recommend this documentary.

If you want to read the interview in full, initially published by HorrOrigins, click here. This is a shortened version.

Xavier Burgin’s documentary Horror Noire is a must-see not only for horror fans but film fans in general. The Shudder exclusive is based on Robin R. Means Coleman’s book of the same name. It covers over 100 years of film history, starting with Birth of a Nation and the negative stereotypes it perpetuated about black Americans. From there, it analyzes the tropes that exist within horror, while also highlighting innovative black filmmakers like Blacula director William Crain and Ganja & Hess director Bill Gunn. All of this leads to the massive success of Jordan Peele’s Get Out. Featuring interviews with Tony Todd (Candyman), Ken Foree (Dawn of the Dead), and Rachel True (The Craft), among many others, Horror Noire truly is a comprehensive doc about black horror cinema. Burgin talked to us about the success of his film and how it’s changed the conversation about black cinema, while acknowledging that the negative tropes the doc highlights still persist in Hollywood. He also chatted about some of his favorite horror flicks and his plans post-Horror Noire.


What has the past year been like for you after the success of Horror Noire?
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Essentially, since finishing Horror Noire, there’s been an intersection between black horror fans and general horror fans who really love the movie. It’s opened up a lot of discussion about what it means to be black and a POC in the horror genre and how we’ve always been a part of it from the beginning. I’m really happy we put a spotlight on it and that folks are paying attention. They want more, so I’m hoping to see more. There will be another documentary on Shudder about LGBT people in horror. I think that’s awesome. I hope we see more of that regarding minority representation in genre film, especially the horror genre.

It’s still been a push to get my work off the ground. It’s absolutely amazing to have such an extremely successful documentary under my belt, but I’m also looking to do work in the narrative space. Horror Noire has gotten me into rooms, but I’m still fighting to get my first narrative project off the ground. It’s a marathon, not a race.

How do you think Horror Noire has changed the conversation about Black cinema since its release?

Horror Noire has put a spotlight on black horror. To the black people and horror fans who appreciate black cinema, they’ve already known about these amazing films we talk about. To a larger audience, this was a deep dive into a part of horror many don’t see or learn. Horror Noire has helped a large swath of horror fans (and film fans in general) understand black people have always been a part of your favorite genre. It’s just that our contributions are not always recognized. 

I think our documentary is important in terms of teaching and reaching people, but I’m not sure if the people who have the infrastructural power and money were very much swayed by it. Unfortunately, Hollywood is very stubborn when it comes to giving black and brown creators chances within any genre. Horror is no different in that way. We’re still fighting to get our work out there. On an educational level, it’s made a huge difference for folks that care, but I’m not sure if the gatekeepers have paid attention in the way that’s necessary to make change.

What do you think needs to happen to change the minds of film industry gatekeepers?

The gatekeepers of Hollywood still tend to be primarily old, rich, and white. This means they usually do not have black and brown people around them. They tend not to know these individuals or understand where we’re coming from and the necessity of our stories. I want to see more black and brown folks in positions to get things off the ground, but at the same time, these individuals have to get a yes from a higher-up who tends to be white, older, and richer. The type of risk they can take, unfortunately, isn’t as big as what they would like. When I say risk, I mean taking a risk on underrepresented filmmakers who are not seen as lucrative. In my opinion, the only way we’ll see a change is if more of the direct funding comes from producers and executives who don’t have the specter of getting fired or losing their livelihood over their head. 

Out of all the films covered in Horror Noire, which is your favorite?

Blacula. For me, it’s less about the movie and more about the director, William Crain. He was a black man in his twenties, in the 70s, helming one of the biggest projects of that era. Everyone (even his own financiers and crew) were against him, so it’s a miracle he pulled this off. William didn’t get the career he deserved due to exclusion and racism, but I’m always reminded without him, the black directors of today wouldn’t have the chances they receive now. I wouldn’t be making this documentary if not for him, so that’s why Blacula is the most important topic in the documentary for me. 

Given how times have changed even since Get Out, what do you think the future of Black cinema is? What story would you like to see that hasn’t been told yet?

Every story about the black experience (both within and outside of horror) still needs to be told. When you look at the overall history of film, it’s still relatively young, and black people are still struggling to make films about us without interference. I do believe black cinema has gone through a mini renaissance recently, but there are still too many creatives fighting to make their projects to say there’s been real, significant improvement in the industry after Horror Noire. 
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I hope that post-Get Out, we’re going to see more horror films that deal with our lived experience from black and brown directors. I also hope we get to see more films that are helmed by black and brown directors that aren’t primarily about race. We can direct anything. We just need the opportunities. 

Why do you think Get Out was able to break through in the way it did to such a large audience?
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Jordan Peele is a phenomenal writer and director. That script should be taught in every single screenwriting classroom. I also think that Blumhouse and Monkeypaw made sure that Jordan had the creative control that he needed to make this in the way he felt was right to him. 

For a very long time, a running joke in the black film community is that we’re only allowed to make hood or slave movies. There’s a looming truth to this assessment. The people who hold infrastructural power in Hollywood are majority white, older people. Their idea of black people works in a binary. They love hood movies because it’s their current view of the black populace. They love slave movies because they can pat themselves on the back for not being the horrible racists their ancestors were. 

Get Out did something different. It didn’t perpetuate the idea racism was an exclusively Southern, conservative problem. It told us the white liberal who puts on a nice face, votes for Obama twice, but is still willing to exploit black people for profit is just as (if not more) dangerous. This type of message should have gotten shot down in Hollywood, but Jordan was able to make it. It felt like his full vision. We need to see more of this. 

DANIEL KALUUYA as Chris Washington in “Get Out,” a speculative thriller from Blumhouse (producers of “The Visit,” “Insidious” series and “The Gift”) and the mind of Jordan Peele, when a young African-American man visits his white girlfriend’s family estate, he becomes ensnared in a more sinister real reason for the invitation.

Which Black directors and/or writers should we be paying attention to?

Nia DaCosta, who is directing the new Candyman movie. You should keep up with Gerard McMurrary, who directed the latest Purge movie. Of course, we all know to keep up with Jordan Peele’s work within the genre. Outside and inside horror, I’m keeping up with the work of Terence Nance, Nijla Mu’min, Tananarive Due, Tina Mabry, and an assortment of talented creators who I believe will be in the industry for a long time. 

In the Horror Noire syllabus, put together by Dr. Robin R. Means Coleman, [author/educator] Tananarive Due, and Graveyard Shift Sisters’ Ashlee Blackwell, all producers for Horror Noire, there are black filmmakers listed who are doing not only short horror films but also feature-length horror. They’re also doing stuff within the written world. 

Which film covered in the documentary do you think people should immediately stream after reading this interview?

You should watch all of them, but if I had to narrow it down, I’d recommend watching Blacula, Ganja & Hess, Tales from The Hood, and Get Out.  I definitely recommend that you watch everything we cover, but not everyone has that amount of time. I won’t recommend that anyone watch Birth of a Nation. I think it’s a racist and horrible film, but I will say if you want to understand where so much of the racism and white supremacist antics we see in America comes from, that’s a film to watch. I’ll go further and say that one of the biggest problems we have in film education is that we’re so willing to talk about the technical direction of this film, but not give the context. It infuriates me whenever I hear about a class somewhere watching Birth of a Nation and the professor says how revolutionary it was as a filmmaking device. You can’t put the politics and racism aside. You need to talk about everything. That’s how you educate the next generation of filmmakers to understand what they’re making, but on a bigger level, there is no such thing as a film that isn’t political. All films are inherently political. It’s up to you as a filmmaker whether or not you acknowledge it and use it to your advantage.

Steven Soderbergh Attempts to Upend the Haunted House Genre

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Steven Soderbergh has dozens of film credits to his name. Yet, he’s never tackled a proper horror film, that is, until his latest feature, Presence. However, for those seeking a good old-fashioned ghost story or haunted house tale, this isn’t quite it. In true Soderbergh fashion, Presence does something slightly different with the genre, while offering a meditation on grief.

The film follows a family who moves into a new suburban home. Lucy Liu plays the mom Rebekah. Chris Sullivan stars as dad Chris, while Eddy Maday plays their son Tyler, and Callina Liang plays their troubled daughter Chloe, who lost two of her best friends, Nadia and Simone. The parents hope that the move will spark a fresh start and help their troubled daughter’s mental health.

The haunted house film has long served as a vehicle to address deeper issues. The Amityville Horror, for instance, deals with the Lutz family’s financial woes at the end of the 1970s. They purchase a house that needs major renovations they can’t quite afford. The Haunting of Hill House is a story about its protagonist Eleanor’s grief and loneliness. She wants so badly to fit in, to have a family that accepts her.

In that regard, Presence works well when it focuses on the family’s tension, be it Chloe’s justified pain, or Chris’ stress and feeling that his family is coming undone. In fact, I wish that the film focused more on this and fleshed out its central cast more.

Presence veers from the genre’s typical formula by often showing the POV of the ghost(s). Convinced the spirits of her friends followed her, Chloe never feels right in the house. Objects suddenly move in her bedroom. The dresser shakes, and the ghosts bang on the walls. Yet, none of this is all that frightening. However, that’s not really the point of this movie. It’s more about the family’s struggles and Chloe’s grief especially.

The film takes another turn when Ryan (West Muholland) is introduced and acts like he has a general interest in Chloe. This leads to a major twist in the last act, but like the rest of the film, this plot point feels a bit too rushed and never fully realized.

I have to give credit to Soderbergh for upending the haunted house genre and showing us the POV of ghost(s). Though the film never reaches its full potential, and the last act especially feels too abrupt, at least Presence offers a different kind of ghost story.

Presence releases in theaters today.

Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man Doesn’t Respond to Much of Anything (And That’s Its Central Flaw)

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Let me preface this by stating that I’m never a fan of tearing down movies. A lot of time, work, and money goes into filmmaking. The intention of this post isn’t to shred the latest reimagining of a classic Universal Monster, that being The Wolf Man, directed by Leigh Whannell. Rather, I’m more interested in exploring why Whannell’s film just didn’t work for me, especially when compared to his 2020 remake of The Invisible Man. While The Wolf Man certainly maintained the tragic aspect of the character, especially through the earnest performance of Christopher Abbott, who plays Blake, the film falls flat because, well, it doesn’t respond to anything. It’s a major missed opportunity to tap into at least some deeper cultural and social anxieties.

Whannell’s film is set in Oregon, and Abbott stars alongside Julia Garner, who plays his wife Charlotte, and Matilda Firth, who plays their daughter Ginger. Oregon, with its deep forests and lush greenery, is the perfect setting for this film. The state, especially its natural landscapes, just has a strangeness to it. Heck, think of the opening credits of “Twin Peaks.” It’s a great setting for a werewolf movie.

Initially, the film sets up a promising concept, that of generational trauma. The opening introduces us to a very young Blake and his domineering father, Grady (Sam Jaeger). Grady frequently snaps at his son, all in the name of protecting him from what’s essentially a werewolf lurking in the woods, which, for whatever reason, can also attack and lurk during the day, without a full moon. Yes, Whannell changes up some of the werewolf lure, but that’s fine. Let him do his own thing.

This interesting opening, however, never fully blooms into a more interesting storyline. In the present day, 30 years after the opening scene, Blake and his family leave NYC and trek to his father’s farm, after Blake receives notice that his father is likely dead. Blake does exhibit flashes of his dad’s anger and temper, lashing out at Ginger and Charlotte a few times, but again, this is an underutilized character point. There are hints that Blake’s dad was at least verbally and mentally abusive, and we do see some of that in the opening, but again, it’s never fleshed out.

What I had really hoped for, and what the trailer sort of hinted at, was a deeper exploration of masculinity. There are shades of it with the poor relationship between father and son, but it’s terribly underwritten. We’re currently living in a time where everyone is asking what’s wrong with young men, why they’re socially isolated, why they’ve drifted hard right, why they helped propel Trump back to the White House, etc., etc. The werewolf is a great metaphor and vehicle to explore this very issue, but Whannell doesn’t do much of anything with it.

This marks quite a contrast from his take on The Invisible Man, a film that fully tapped into the anxieties of the #MeToo/Women’s March era, a film that also addresses rapid advances in technology, much like James Whale’s 1933 film. In contrast, The Wolf Man just feels so culturally and socially impotent.

Even the toxic father/son dynamic is weak. The father/son werewolves even come to blows at one point, but that’s another part of the script that feels way too undercooked. I don’t blame any of the actors in this film. As already stated, Abbott does a fine job in the lead role, giving his character the sort of pathos and tragedy that Lon Chaney J. had in the 1941 film. There’s a sense that Garner wanted to give more to her character, but there’s just not much in the script.

The initial Wolf Man holds up for so many reasons, including Chaney Jr.’s performance, the awesome Gothic set designs, and most importantly, because it’s a response to the anxieties of WW II. I just wrote about this for 1428 Elm, but the film’s writer, Curt Siodmak, was a Jewish man, forced to flee Germany in the 1930s to escape the Nazis. The parallels between his story and Larry Talbot’s (Chaney Jr.) are obvious. Even the werewolf mark that afflicts Talbot resembles the Star of David.

While Whannell’s Wolf Man is a decent monster movie, it’s just not much more than that. It falls flat because it doesn’t respond to anything, be it otherness, masculinity, or any other issue, really. It feels like a rushed script with too many underbaked elements.

Why the Wolf Man (1941) remains a sympathetic symbol of otherness

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***This essay was first published at 1428 Elm. You can read it in full here.***

While other Universal Monsters have sympathetic stories, especially Frankenstein’s Monster, few convey otherness as much as Larry Talbot, also known as The Wolf Man (Lon Chaney Jr.). With Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man set to howl in theaters this weekend, now’s a great time to revisit the 1941 film and explore its themes of otherness, including the impact of WWII on its writer, Curt Siodmak, a Jewish man who fled to the U.S. to escape persecution.

From the outset, the parallels between what Jewish people faced in Nazi Germany and Larry’s plight are evident. The film opens with a close-up of an ancient text detailing the mark of the werewolf. It includes a five-pointed star, similar to the Star of David. When Larry is bitten early in the film, he eventually bears the mark on his chest, making him an outcast and drawing the townspeople’s suspicion.

Even prior to the bite, Larry is associated with the symbol. While flirting with his love interest, Gwen (Evelyn Ankers), at an antique shop, he purchases a cane with the wolf symbol. Gwen warns him that the image is associated with the werewolf, but he doesn’t care and dismisses it.

The Wolf Man‘saddress of otherness is no coincidence. Siodmak’s New York Times obituary includes a quote from him that states, “I am the Wolf Man,” before adding, “I was forced into a fate I didn’t want: to be a Jew in Germany. I would not have chosen that as my fate. The swastika represents the moon. When the moon comes up, the man doesn’t want to murder, but he knows he cannot escape it, the Wolf Man destiny.”

Siodmak’s quote is interesting because it depicts the Wolf Man as both victim and murderer. Larry Talbot can’t escape his fate, nor can he quell his murderous impulses. Even before he transforms into a wolf, he kills a Romani fortune teller named Bela (Bela Lugosi) by brutally bludgeoning him with the cane, which causes the bite. To be fair, Bela was in wolf form, but the scene is prolonged and quite shocking.

Unfortunately, there is no escape for Larry Talbot. His story begins and ends in sorrow. He only returns to his family’s estate because his older brother died in a hunting accident, so the care of the estate falls upon him. At one point, Gwen’s actual fiancé, Frank Andrews (Patric Knowles), notes that there’s something very tragic about Talbot. He also refuses to shake his hand, again othering Larry, before he tells Gwen that he couldn’t help but notice the wolf handle and star on Larry’s cane.

Larry’s fate only worsens when the townspeople hunt him down in the woods, in true Universal Monsters fashion. He dies at the hands of his very own father (Claude Rains), who doesn’t know that the Wolf Man is his son. Larry’s struck down by the same cane that he used to kill Bela. It’s a haunting, poetic, and sad ending for one of Universal’s most well-known monsters.

Besides Larry’s association with otherness, there’s also the depiction of the Romani people. As soon as they’re introduced, they’re linked to the Old World and superstitions. In fact, the set design changes from city streets to a foggy landscape with gnarled trees and stunning gothic backdrops. Larry then meets Bela and his mother, Maleva (Maria Ouspenskaya), who eventually explains the werewolf curse.

Like Larry, the Romani people are scorned by some townspeople, who decry their traditions. Similar to the Jewish people, Nazis targeted the Romani people for extermination. According to the Holocaust Encyclopedia, a resource of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, beginning in 1933, the Nazis started persecuting the Romani people in Germany, forcing them into internment camps. It’s estimated that the Nazis murdered at least 250,000 European Roma, but the number could be as high as 500,000.

Considering these facts, it’s no surprise that Siodmak created Romani characters and used them as an integral part of the story. Larry Talbot eventually has more in common with them than his flesh-and-blood family. He learns the full extent of the curse and his otherness through them. Meanwhile, Maleva, more than any other character, tries to protect and save Larry, giving him a pendant at first to break the curse before encouraging him to run. She understands the danger Larry poses but also how their society shuns anyone deemed different.

Lon Chaney Jr.’s performance as the Wolf Man remains a horror staple because he’s a tragic figure who embodies otherness. The film works well because it draws upon Siodmak’s lived experience as a Jewish man living during World War II. Larry Talbot’s story and curse is heartbreaking, and Chaney Jr. plays it perfectly with great pathos.

The Damned Unleashes an Icy Sense of Dread

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This review was first published over at Horror Buzz.

The Damned is such a fitting movie for the beginning of January. Inspired by Icelandic folklore and featuring countless snowy backdrops, the film is a frigid slow burn that truly creates a sense of dread. It also addresses the consequences of decisions rendered.

Set in a remote fishing outpost during the 19th Century, the film stars Odessa Young as a widow named Eva. In charge of the outpost, she has to make a decision after a shipwreck close to the crew’s shoreline. She can either allow her fishermen to risk venturing out into the choppy waters to try to save some of the ship’s men, or she can opt to do nothing and preserve what limited supplies the group has during an especially harsh winter. She decides to do nothing.

Eva’s decision haunts the crew for the rest of the runtime. More specifically, director Thordur Palsson’s debut draws on the Norse myth of the Draugur, a creature that’s like a part-ghost, part-zombie. As one character describes it, the Draugur is like a returned person with flesh and blood. It torments every character in the film, causing them to hear voices, turn on each other, and commit horrid acts of violence. The creature is shown a few times and feels omnipresent. I actually think the film would have worked slightly better if the monster was shown a bit less, creating greater ambiguity and mystery.

The Draugur functions as an unshakeable curse that befalls the characters due to their decision not to save the men, lost to the frigid ocean’s depths. Meanwhile, Young gives a memorable performance, especially through the expressive look of her eyes and the way she conveys her character’s breaking point, caused by the curse and the weight of her decision. She’s really at the front and center of this movie and outshines just about all of the men. In fact, too many of the fisherman feel like background characters, without their own storylines.

While this film certainly works as an eerie morality tale, the visuals really make The Damned stand out. Thordur grew up in the Icelandic landscapes, and it really shows. Everything about this movie feels cold. The wind howls. Eva constantly treks through snow. The sea looks inky and menacing. Yet, the visuals stun at times, thanks, in part, to the film’s director of photography, Eli Arenson, who previously worked on Lamb, another visually rich film. The Damned lends itself well to the big screen, and the striking natural landscape becomes a character.

There does come a point where questions about the plot and direction arise. For instance, if the group has such limited supplies, why do they bother building coffins for the drowned? Where are they getting the wood and nails? However, a startling moment in the last act saves the narrative. It makes the rest of the pieces fit, and it’s one heck of a pay-off.

The Damned is an unsettling period piece with awe-striking landscapes and a performance by Young that shines against the bleak and isolated setting. This is a perfect film to watch in winter because it evokes such an icy sense of dread.

The Damned releases in theaters today.

7 Favorite Christmas Horror Movies

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Now that Thanksgiving has come and gone, the holiday songs have started playing in every store. While some folks enjoy traditional Christmas movies, such as Home Alone or It’s a Wonderful Life, the horror community has a slew of films to pick from to watch this holiday season. In fact, holiday horror has really become its own subgenre. If you’re looking for something spooky to watch this season, here are my personal favorites.

Gremlins

Director Joe Dante’s 1984 monster movie Gremlins is a classic. Yes, the mogwai known as Gizmo is hella cute, especially in one scene where he sports a Santa hat and plays the keyboard in Billy’s (Zach Galligan) bedroom. Gizmo even purrs, sings, and makes all sorts of cuddly noises. However, if the rules are broken (don’t feed him after midnight, don’t get him wet, avoid bright lights) then the little adorable fuzzball spawns the vicious Gremlins.

Gremlins is really the perfect gateway horror movie for kids. It’s not too scary, but it’s still a top-notch creature feature from one of America’s best contemporary horror directors. Oh, and who can forget that scene where Phoebe Cates’ Kate tells Billy all about the worst thing that ever happened to her at Christmas. In case there’s actually someone out there who hasn’t seen Gremlins, I don’t want to spoil Cates’ monologue, but it’s a doozie.

Silent Night, Deadly Night

While Gremlins was a box office hit in 1984, Silent Night, Deadly Night was not. Released by Tri-Star Pictures, it was yanked from theaters about a week after its release because of controversy. In particular, the religious right threw a hissy fit about the promotional material, in particular the poster of a killer Santa in the chimney, holding an axe. And well, generally, they simply didn’t like Chris Kringle depicted as a murderer

Controversy aside, Silent Night, Deadly Night is a fun slasher that follows Billy Chapman (Robert Brian Wilson). Traumatized by his parents’ murder on Christmas Eve, and then tormented by sadistic nuns in an orphanage, little Billy grows up to embark on a yuletide rampage as a deadly Santa.

Terrifier 3

Writer/director Damien Leone’s Terrifier 3 just may be the most popular horror movie of 2024. Art the Clown is everywhere. He’s even a Spirit Halloween animatronic. In the third installment, Art returns to once again terrorize his arch nemesis, the stellar Final Girl Sienna, played by modern day scream queen Lauren LaVera. Some time has passed since the horrific events of the second movie, and Sienna isn’t doing too well, suffering from PTSD. Yet, she finds the strength to go toe to toe with the maniacal demon clown yet again.

This film has so many gruesome scenes, from the opening to a sequence involving a chainsaw, to an encounter Art has with a Santa in a bar. Meanwhile, Sienna has one hell of a Final Girl sequence in the last act. Art gives Billy from Silent Night, Deadly Night a real run for his money in terms of killer Santas.

Rare Exports

The Finnish movie Rare Exports is all sorts of wonderfully strange. A young boy named Pietari (Onni Tommila) and his friend Juuso (Ilmari Järvenpää) believe that a secret mountain drilling project near their home uncovered the tomb of Santa. However, this isn’t a Jolly ‘Ol St. Nick they encounter. Instead, it’s an evil, monstrous Santa.

Meanwhile, when Pietari’s father (Jorma Tommila) captures a feral old man (Peeter Jakobi) in his wolf trap, the man may hold the key to why reindeer are being slaughtered and children are disappearing. If you’re looking for something a little different this holiday season, give Rare Exports a chance.

Anna and the Apocalypse

Every Thanksgiving night, after we’re done visiting family, and loaded up on way too many carbs, my wife and I watch Anna and the Apocalypse as a way to start the holiday season. Imagine if the cast of
“Glee” starred in a zombie movie at Christmas time. Well, that’s Anna and the Apocalypse.

No, this movie isn’t for everyone. That said, the Scottish film has a lot of heart, great storytelling, and one kickass final girl in Ella Hunt’s Anna. The songs serve to push the narrative forward and also underscore some of the movie’s themes. Trust me, you haven’t seen a zombie movie like this. If you do give this a chance, be warned that songs like “Turning My Life Around” and “Hollywood Ending” will likely get stuck in your head.

Christmas Evil

Yes, here’s another killer Santa Clause movie. Christmas Evil, set in suburban NJ, is wonderfully weird. Directed by Lewis Jackson, it stars Brandon Maggart as Harry. Tired of everyone’s cynicism and berated and belittled at his toy factory job, Harry turns into a vengeful Santa. Over the years, the film gained a cult following, much like Silent Night, Deadly Night. It also faced controversy and was seized as part of the Video Nasty period in the UK in the 1980s.

Oh, and did I mention that Harry spies on children to see if they’re being naughty and nice? He also watched his mom get sexually groped by his father, dressed up as Santa, when he was a kid. Yet, this is also the story about a fed-up worker more than anything else.

Black Christmas

Not only is Bob Clark’s Canadian film Black Christmas an iconic holiday movie, but it’s an incredibly important slasher film, specifically one of the biggest influences on John Carpenter’s Halloween because of the killer’s first person POV shots. A group of sorority women are terrorized by a killer named Billy. He continually calls them and makes obscene phone calls. Then, the murders start.

This film has a heck of a cast too, especially Margot Kidder as the foul-mouthed Barb and Olivia Hussey as Final Girl Jess. Horror fans will also recognize John Saxon as Lt. Fuller. Saxon would later play Nancy’s dad in Nightmare on Elm Street and Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. Nearly a decade after Black Christmas, Clark would go on to direct another seasonal staple, A Christmas Story. Both films certainly have doses of dark humor.

Black Christmas was also quite progressive for its time because of the abortion storyline that impacts Jess. She’s determined to make her own decisions about her body, despite the crazed reactions from her overbearing boyfriend, Peter (Keir Dullea). In terms of subject matter, slasher tropes, and tone, Black Christmas was way ahead of its time and one of the major influences on the genre. Skip the two remakes. Watch the OG. It’s a must-see.

Demi Moore Does Body Horror in The Substance

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A few years ago, for Horror Homeroom, I wrote about how writer/director Coralie Fargeat reverses the male gaze in her rape/revenge debut Revenge. In the beginning of that film, Fargeat focuses the camera’s gaze on Jen (Matilida Anna Ingrid Lutz), the mistress of the uber wealthy Richard (Kevin Janssens), who rapes Jen not long into the runtime. Initially, the camera focuses on Jen’s legs, buttocks, and breasts, as she sucks a lollipop. This switches about halfway through the film, and not only does the gaze switch, but Jen becomes the hunter, ultimately unleashing hell upon Kevin for the brutality he inflicted upon her.

Fargeat’s latest feature, the excellent The Substance, again deals with issues of gender and the male gaze but expands that to include the beauty industry and how culture generally treats aging women, specifically celebrities. To stress that point from the outset, the movie opens with a Hollywood star just constructed on Hollywood Boulevard. It belongs to Elisabeth Sparkle, played by Demi Moore. During the first few years of the star’s existence, people pose for pictures with it. Judging by their clothes, you can tell this it’s the 1980s, which was the start of Moore’s career as a Brat Pack member. As years go by, the star cracks. People walk by it. They spill stuff on it. They don’t recall who Sparkle is. Her celebrity has been reduced to a workout series, and she’s on the cusp of aging out of that, on her 50th bday.

As soon as the film’s first act, Elisabeth gets notification from a strange, anonymous company that she can take a product called “the substance” to essentially look younger again. She really, really wants this, since the powers that be booted her from her workout show, in order to find a younger, more attractive model/actress.

Unlike Revenge, The Substance is very much a body horror movie, and its practical effects are on par with the likes of The Fly, Basket Case, and other great body horror movies of the 1980s. When Elisabeth injects herself with the substance, she passes out on her bathroom floor. Her back splits open, and a younger version of herself appears named Sue (Margaret Qualley). Sue easily lands Elisabeth’s former job. Her face and body are plastered on billboards. She appears frequently in commercials and chats up late-night talk show hosts. She obtains everything Elisabeth once had.

The problem is that the more famous Sue becomes, the more Elisabeth ages. The two entities technically need each other to exist, but Sue takes and sucks more and more from Elisabeth, until she starts to look like a crone. Even prior to that, Fargeat uses lightening and make-up to make Moore look older, to make her skin look as cracked as Elisabeth’s Hollywood star.

The messages in Fargeat’s film are by no means subtle. The film serves up an all-out assault and critique on the beauty industry, the media, celebrity, and how older women are mistreated and even worse, forgotten by the culture that once loved them. Men in suits/bigwig TV execs always tell Sue and Elisabeth to smile more. The film has so many discomforting moments, reinforced by the frequent close-ups that Fargeat uses. The sound design is sometimes amped up too, especially to reinforce how loud and overbearing men in power can be.

Like Revenge, The Substance makes the male gaze obvious with frequent close-ups of Sue working out in front of the cameras, zooming in on her most intimate body parts, objectifying and sexualizing her. Yet, she also knows the power of her own body. She also craves the fame and sues her looks to obtain it.

Yet, what I found to be the most powerful moment isn’t one of the gross-out body horror sequences. Near the midway point, Elisabeth nearly goes on a date with an old classmate who still has a major crush on her and generally likes her. For nearly an hour, she stands in front of the mirror, messing with her make-up. She’s haunted by a massive billboard of Sue just outside of her swanky apartment’s window. Because she no longer feels attractive, Elisabeth never attends the date. It’s heartbreaking, and Moore is great throughout the film, but she’s especially brilliant in that particular scene.


While I don’t think The Substance will resonate with everyone, especially some of the body horror bits, Fargeat isn’t afraid to take some wild wings with her filmmaking. Moore is perfectly cast in this film about an aging celebrity deemed disposable by a celebrity culture that created her. Once again, Fargeat does a lot of interesting things with the camera and the gaze to reinforce points she wants to make about gender.

The Substance is currently in theaters. If you want to learn more about Fargeat’s work, check out this interview I conducted with her for Signal Horizon a few years ago.

Fantasia Film Fest Favorites

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I’m very grateful that I had the chance to cover the Fantasia Film Festival again for Horror Buzz. Instead of sharing every single review, I just wanted to post some of my favorites/highlights from the fest.

Witchboard

It’s been decades since Chuck Russell directed a horror movie. He made a name for himself with Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (probably the fan favorite NOES sequel) and The Blob remake, before going onto direct major, major Hollywood productions, including The Mask and The Scorpion King.

His return to the horror genre is a reimagining of the 80s cult classic Witchboard. This film feels very cinematic in scope and would do well with a wider theatrical release. Like Russell’s other work, it has some impressive practical effects and a solid performance by Madison Iseman, who plays Emily. She comes across the board, which has powerful, supernatural effects on her. Also of note is James Campbell Bower’s performance as Alexander Baptiste, a nefarious villain. Bower is best known as Vecna in Stranger Things, and he certainly plays a villain well.

You can read my interview with Russell and the cast, as well as my review of the film.

Cuckoo

By far, Cuckoo was my most anticipated film at Fantasia this year. Simply put, NEON, its distributor, has been putting out some of the most interesting films as of late. Longlegs is a prime example. Cuckoo is freakin’ BONKERS. Not everything in the plot makes sense, but boy, is it atmospheric as hell.

Hunter Schafer turns in one heck of a performance as the grief-stricken Gretchen. Her character evolves from a wounded and moody teen to a switchblade-wielding, kickass final girl. This is contrasted with Dan Stevens’ absolutely bloodcurdling, flute-playing antagonist, Herr Konig.

Cuckoo will have a wider theatrical release on Aug. 9. Until then, read my review.

Chainsaws Were Singing

This may be my favorite film from the fest. Chainsaws Were Singing is an Estonian horror musical that’s nearly two hours long. It shouldn’t work, but it does. Oh, and it’s a love story. I don’t want to say much more than that, but whenever this gets a wider release, whatever that may look like, give it a chance! It’ll worm its way into your heart. If you want to learn more, check out my review.

The Soul Eater

French directors Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury made names for themselves with 2007’s Inside, an unrelenting and punishing gem from the New French Extremity movement. Since then, everything they’ve made since has been so different. They never recreate the same film. Their last movie, for instance, The Deep House, was an underwater haunted house flick.

Their latest, The Soul Eater, is a bleak police procedural movie. It’s a slow burn with a few harrowing crime scenes sprinkled throughout, all leading to an absolutely bleak ending. Because Amazon Studios is listed in the opening credits, I assume the film will wind up on Prime Video. Give it a watch if that’s the case. Check out my review in the meantime.

Darkest Miram

Even though Charlie Kaufman is listed as an executive producer, this is really nothing like any of his films, or a Spike Jonze movie, for that matter. Darkest Miriam follows a quirky librarian, Miriam (Britt Lower), who falls in love with an artist/cab driver, Janko (Tom Mercier). Oh, and she has nicknames for all of the library patrons and eventually feels like she’s being stalked.

I can’t understate how creative the storytelling is in this film, from the “incident reports” Miriam files that give insight into her world, to the threatening letters she finds in library books. This is such an odd, endearing, slice-of-life movie with a great performance by Lower who says so much through body language and facial expressions. Check out my review.

Yes, Longlegs is the creepiest movie of the year

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I’m not one to say such and such is the scariest movie of all time, or such and such rivals The Exorcist. I avoid those broad statements. That said, I will definitively declare that Longlegs is the creepiest movie I’ve seen all year, one that will stick with me for a long while, from its cold, immersive world, to Maika Monroe and Nic Cage’s performances, to the unsettling imagery that haunts nearly every frame. Writer/director Oz Perkins’ Longlegs is pure nightmare fuel.

Set in the 1990s, the film stars Monroe (It Follows) as FBI agent Lee Harker, who’s placed on a case to locate a serial killer and also solve why the patriarch within various families murders his loved ones. She works alongside Agent Carter (Blair Underwood), who has been on the case for years but has been running cold until Lee shows up. For whatever reason, Lee seems to possess some sort of psychic abilities and connection to Longlegs (Cage). The reasons why exactly become much clearer in the film’s final act, but the less audience members know going into the film, the better. Carter comes across as a hard-nosed skeptic, while Lee believes there’s something otherworldly possibly at play. It’s a solid dynamic at the center of the film.

Longlegs has earned some comparisons to Silence of Lambs, and they’re somewhat warranted. Monroe’s character, like Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling, largely operates in an all-male world. This is the 90s, after all. More than one agent doubts Lee’s ability to handle such a grisly case. She has to prove herself, and prove herself she eventually does, to the point she becomes absolutely obsessed with the case. She stays up all night, trying to decipher Longlegs’ bizarre letters, which seem like they’re written in code. At one point, she tells her mom over the phone that the work she’s doing is important. She understands if she solves the case, she’ll save other families. There’s also the fact that Lee hails from a tiny unnamed town and grew up sheltered, living only with her religious mom, played by Alicia Witt. The scenes between those two are oddly unnerving as well. Something simply seems strange and uncanny about their relationship.

If I had one critique of Perkins’ other films, it’s that they too often elevated style over story and narrative. Longlegs finally feels like he got both just right- style and substance. This film is incredibly bleak aesthetically, from the snowy settings of small-town America to the dim libraries where Lee often works late into the night. Yet, Perkins creates quite a world here, with a dense narrative and several layers that eventually peel away the longer the runtime progresses. By the last act, it all gels. I also can’t understate just how hellish the imagery is, from nuns with shotguns, to maggot-covered corpses, to snakes that hiss and fill the frame. There are moments that feel like they’re statured in pure evil, meant to torment the viewer’s mind well after the credits roll.

For as stylish the film looks and for as detailed the narrative is, this film works so well because of Monroe and Cage’s performances. In short, this is the most disturbing role I’ve ever seen Cage in. He’s barely recognizable when you do see him. Every moment he’s on screen is hair-raising. Monroe, meanwhile, plays a pensive, yet determined FBI agent, and one specific scene in which she confronts Longlegs drips with edge-of-your-seat suspense. It’s no wonder that the distributor, Neon, made a whole promo about Monroe’s heartbeat the first time she saw Cage in the Longlegs makeup. You feel it in that particular scene they have together.

Longlegs is a film that warrants rewatches, if audience members can handle the devilish imagery. It’s one of those films where you’ll want to reexamine nearly every frame to see what you might have missed during the first or second viewing. This is, by far, Perkins’ strongest film to date, and it’s Cage’s most unnerving performance. Meanwhile, Monroe has starred in two of the best horror films of the last decade- It Follows and Longlegs.

The film opens nationwide on Friday.

In Honor of John Carpenter’s Hollywood Star

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Recently, for 1428 Elm, I made a list of my favorite John Carpenter films in honor of his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, coming next year. This got me thinking a lot about Carpenter, who has pretty much stopped directing (I don’t really count that Suburban Screams episode last fall as a proper return) to record music and still score some films. He also plays a lot of video games now, apparently. Still, I’d be hard-pressed to think of a director who has had more impact on the horror genre than Carpenter, other than maybe James Whale, Wes Craven, and Hitchcock.

If you asked me, I couldn’t tell you which Carpenter film I saw first. Was it Halloween? Was it The Thing? Was it The Fog? Most likely, I first viewed his work with my dad, who made a habit of renting horror movies with me when I was a kid, and I’m fairly certain that’s when I first encountered the maestro’s work, likely when I was 10, 11, or 12. Years later, in college, my friends and I had horror movie marathons at least once a month. Carpenter’s work factored heavily into our screenings, and it’s then I encountered some of his lesser-known work, like Princess of Darkness and Assault on Precinct 13.

The older I get, the more I’m drawn to some of these less-revered films, especially the later parts of what Carpenter described as his “apocalypse” trilogy. This trilogy began with The Thing in 1982, but I find myself rewatching Prince of Darkness (1987) and In the Mouth of Madness (1994) more. Because I’ve taught Halloween so many times in my horror film/literature class and because The Thing is so revered, and rightfully so, I’ve taken a pause from those classics in part because they feel so inescapable.

Prince of Darkness caught my attention in the last year or two because that film, while incredibly eerie, also has such a profound sense of dread to it. In short, there’s nothing optimistic about Prince of Darkness. It’s incredibly freakin’ bleak. Even though Childs or MacReady may be infected at the end of The Thing, the last shot shows them sitting around a fire, trading a bottle of whiskey back and forth. You hold out hope one of them will survive the night. There’s no chance for that at the conclusion of Prince of Darkness and you start to think that yes, the world may end, after graduate students and scientist unleash a strange goop from an ancient canister that ushers in Satan. Hey, I didn’t say the plot was perfect. Oh, and did I mention that Donald Pleasance plays a priest, and there’s a cameo by Alice Cooper?!

In the Mouth of Madness is Carpenter’s last truly big film, and he really went crazy with it. The film stars Sam Neill, who plays an insurance investigator sent to solve the mystery of Sutter Cane’s disappearance. Cane is a horror novelist whose work is similar to Lovecraft and whose pages start to become real. This film is all out bonkers, and it’s so much fun to see Neill return to the horror genre after the massive success of Jurassic Park. For me, this one has plenty of rewatch value because of Neill’s performance and for what it has to say about mass marketing, consumption, and even the publishing industry itself. It’s also a fitting conclusion to the apocalypse trilogy. It’s also a thrill ride to see a Lovecraftian Carpenter film.

It’s unclear if Carpenter will ever direct a full-length feature again. He’s stated in the past he wants to, but regardless, his legacy is secured. Halloween and The Thing especially are essentially inescapable classics at this point, referenced in countless other films. Yet, for as much as I love those two works, I find myself returning to Carpenter’s mid-career films much more, appreciating them years later.